Privacy Policy

The short version

The Quillective is local-first: your projects (manuscripts, characters, worlds, plots, and tools data) live in your own browser or your own connected cloud storage, not on our servers. We do not read your project files to run the service.

The account information needed to run a sign-in and social platform — your username, email, and the social content you choose to share with other members — is stored on our servers. We do not sell your personal information, and we never share it with advertisers.

If you connect Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, we only ever touch the files The Quillective itself created there, never anything else in your account.

1. What this policy covers

This policy describes what information The Quillective collects, why, and what you can do about it. It applies to anyone who creates an account. It works alongside our Terms of Service & User Agreement, which covers conduct and ownership of what you write — this page is specifically about data.

The Quillective is invite-only during alpha and is intended for people 18 and older, consistent with our Terms of Service. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

2. Your writing stays with you

Your projects — manuscripts, characters, world-building, plotting, and every tool inside a project — are stored in your browser (via its own local storage) or, if you choose to connect one, your personal cloud storage or device folder. This data never passes through our servers except to reach a cloud provider you connected yourself, and we do not read its contents to operate The Quillective.

Because of this, we cannot recover a project that only ever lived in a browser that's been cleared, lost, or damaged. Use the export and backup tools in Settings, and keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose.

3. Account information we store

To run your account, we store: your username, display (pen) name, email address, avatar, self-assigned roles, notification and visibility preferences, and a securely hashed password (never the password itself, and never anything that could be reversed back into it).

We also store the sign-in sessions active on your devices (so you can see and revoke them from Settings), any invites you created or redeemed, and any feedback, bug reports, or content reports you send us.

We store the version of the Terms of Service you most recently accepted and when, so we know when to ask you to review a new version.

4. Social content you choose to share

Some things are inherently shared with other members, so they're stored on our servers rather than only in your browser: your public profile, forum posts and threads, direct messages, follow relationships, updates, beta-reading requests/applications/comments, and author service listings and reviews.

We store this only to display and deliver it to the people you're sharing it with, and only for as long as it stays on the service. Some of it — like the reason given when declining a message request, or content that's been reported — is visible to staff so we can keep the community safe.

Beta Reading is the one place this touches your actual manuscript, and it works differently from the rest of Social on purpose, to stay consistent with "your writing stays with you" above: when you share a manuscript with an accepted beta reader, it's encrypted in your own browser first, using a key that only that reader's device holds. What reaches our servers is that encrypted copy — unreadable without the reader's private key, which never leaves their device either. We delete it the moment the read finishes (or sooner, if you withdraw the share yourself) — it isn't kept around after that. The reader's comments and final thoughts, which are their own words rather than your manuscript, are stored normally like any other Social content.

5. Connecting Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive

Connecting a cloud storage provider is entirely optional, and used only to back up your own projects to your own account with that provider, under your control.

For Google Drive, we request the drive.file scope — the most limited access Google offers. This lets The Quillective see and manage only the specific files it creates in your Drive (kept in a visible "The Quillective" folder so you can always find them), and nothing else already in your account. We cannot see, list, or modify any other file in your Drive.

The Quillective's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

The same principle applies to Microsoft OneDrive: access is limited to the files The Quillective creates there.

We never store your Google or Microsoft access or refresh tokens anywhere the browser can reach. They're encrypted at rest on our server, used only to request a short-lived access token when you sync, and that access token lives only in server memory for the duration of that one request.

Disconnecting a cloud provider (in Settings) stops any further access — it does not delete files already saved to your Drive or OneDrive, since those are yours and live in your own account.

6. Information we collect automatically

Technical error reports — which can include your account, the page you were on, and basic browser details — so we can find and fix problems.

Basic counts of which features are used, with no content of your writing attached, so we can tell which parts of The Quillective are actually helping and which aren't.

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies: one to keep you signed in, one non-secret cookie holding your account id (so your browser can keep your local projects separated from anyone else who's used the same browser), and one remembering your chosen theme. None of these are advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not use third-party analytics or ad trackers.

7. Who else handles data, on our behalf

We use a small number of third-party services to run The Quillective: a database and hosting provider to store the account and social information described above, a rate-limiting service that only ever sees anonymized request counts, and an email provider to send verification links and password resets.

If you connect a cloud storage account, your project files are sent directly to that provider (Google or Microsoft) under its own terms — we act only as the bridge you asked for, not a middleman who keeps a copy.

We do not sell your personal information to anyone, for any reason.

8. Your choices and rights

From Settings, you can: download a complete copy of everything we hold on your account (including every local project store, not just the server side), disconnect a connected cloud provider, archive your account (reversible — sign back in and you'll be offered a reactivation request for staff to approve), or delete your account outright.

Deleting your account is permanent. It removes your account, profile, follows, and sign-in sessions, and scrubs your identifying information from our error, feedback, and usage records. Forum posts, messages, and reviews you wrote may remain visible so conversations stay coherent for the people you shared them with, but they're no longer linked to your identity. Deletion does not reach into your own browser's local storage or your own cloud storage — those are yours to manage.

If you have a question about your data that these tools don't cover, reach us through Send Feedback inside the app, or however else you've been in touch with us.

9. How we protect this information

Passwords are hashed, never stored in plain text. Sign-in sessions use random tokens in a cookie your browser's JavaScript can't read, and are individually revocable from Settings. Connected cloud storage tokens are encrypted at rest. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't promise this one is either — but we take reasonable, ordinary care.

10. Changes to this policy

We'll update this policy as The Quillective grows, and as best we can we'll keep it accurate to what the service actually does. The version number and date at the top change whenever the content does. We do not require re-acceptance of privacy policy updates the way we do for the Terms of Service, but a material change will be noted here.

11. Questions

For questions about this policy or your data, use Send Feedback inside The Quillective.